This lecture features two of our summer 2017 research fellows: Maria Zalewska, PhD candidate in Cinema and Media Studies and Mellon PhD Fellow in the Digital Humanities, USC School of Cinematic Arts, and Noha Ayoub, USC undergraduate student majoring in Law, History and Culture and minoring in Middle East Studies.

USC Shoah Foundation is deeply saddened by the passing of Hannah Kent, who survived three concentration camps and a death march, but went on to live a full life filled with love, family and resolve. She was 88. Born Hanka Szarkman on Oct. 9, 1929, in Lodz, Poland, Hannah Kent was the wife of Roman Kent, a Life Member of USC Shoah Foundation’s Board of Councilors and a leader in the Holocaust survivor movement. Hannah and Roman Kent met in New York after World War II and married in 1957. They had two children, Jeffrey and Susan.

Rachel Herman is the Program Platforms Lead of the USC Shoah Foundation. In this role, Rachel manages IWitness, the Visual History Archive, SFI Access, Echoes & Reflections and the building of in-app and Virtual IWalks. Rachel joined the Institute in 2017, working as a content specialist with the Education team.

Lindsay is the Managing Director of Echoes & Reflections, the Institute's flagship Holocaust Education program in partnership with ADL and Yad Vashem. In this role, she leads strategic planning and the ongoing programmatic and operational oversight to ensure successful reach of goals and objectives of the Partnership. Lindsay holds an MEd from the University of Vermont and a BA in History from Northwestern University. She has held a range of leadership positions in the non-profit education field for more than 25 years. Lindsay is based outside of Chicago, IL.

Svetlana Ushakova provides the service of research, annotation, and evaluation to the Dimensions in Testimony program. In 2014-2018, she worked at USC Shoah Foundation as an indexer and research assistant. Before she moved to the USA, she worked for ten years as a researcher at an academic institution in Russia and has several publications. Svetlana received her doctorate in Russian History from Novosibirsk State University, Russia, and her master in Library and Information Science from San Jose State University.

Not long ago, Holocaust survivor Anita Lasker-Wallfisch met in a hotel restaurant in Germany with a man named Niklas Frank, whose father was a German war criminal. They’d both been invited to appear together to speak to history students. While preparing at the restaurant, Lasker-Wallfisch and Frank were interrupted by a man who approached their table and complained they were “spoiling the pleasant atmosphere with all this talk of Auschwitz.”